Regarding killing with purely Striking/Shindo: It -is- possible. Even against relatively capable fighters - I doubt it'd work on Mizik, but I've definitely pulled it off on people who weren't newbies before. Llyth once. Carbine six times (in a row). Several Kohai of varying levels. I think I pulled it on @Jacen once, but I can't remember.

I'd also disagree it's a viable primary kill method. It's a party trick at most. Anyone with the presence of mind to go defensive or run on the Voidfist, or who even just tweaks their Svo a little so that voidfist doesn't cripple it so badly, will shrug it off - I used to make a point of testing Ashuran trainees' thinking with the trick, to teach them to stay aware and not just stand and slug it out.

Blademasters aren't really built for slugging it out. If we're not at the advantage, it's in our best interests to back off and wait until we are, or to look for a way to force an advantage for ourselves. This is what I was teaching; not that striking/shindo kills are viable on even high end opponents. I mean heck, if I tried that on Mizik the response would probably be something like 'touch shield;plaugh dorn', and that's me being optimistic - I can at least work around shields.

That said, we definitely have more options than pure bleed to Brokenstar, and I've put them to use in the past. Twil would turtle hard on anything that resembled a Brokenstar attempt, so I took to setting up Deathstrikes instead. We can put out some really nasty damage in Arash and force most targets into a mangle-loop long enough to kill. Riftlocks, pipelocks, manalocks. The options are there to be used and explored.

But if you're switching to the class and looking for a teacher, don't expect to be taught that much more than the straight Brokenstar strategies. I don't even bother teaching more than that unless someone is actually interesting and seems like they're worth the effort. It's very effective, it doesn't take too much effort to set up, and most people don't know how to handle it.

Blademasters have a whole toolbox. But given our hammer is a glowing vibro-hammer of doom, why wouldn't we assume every opponent is a nail?

Why even bothering just using only striking/shindo when you CAN almost always pair a strike with a slash.

Their is really no point in handicapping yourself at all even for the learning experience because whose going to trans striking and shindo before twoarts.

Last time I checked Twoarts increases the drawslash damage so it helps in bashing so that would be always trans first.

Also when was the last time you actually pulled a kill off from only using striking/shindo? I mean they may have nerfed blademasters a lot during the past 250 Achaea years you last used this.

Today you try to pull this nonsense only using striking/shindo stunt and you get yourself beaten down by a 18 year old newbie. No joke. Some of the 18-21 year old newbies are currently beating some of the experienced fighters now. Just a couple of weeks ago I saw a Runewarden about 20 years old beat someone 520 percent his might.

@NyboeDo you even fight? I feel like you're getting your opinion from others who have actually fought them. And when they explain it to you they over generalize it to make it easier to explain, or they are bitter and pissed off and start saying it's OP because they lost. I don't know, just feels like you're talking out your ass a little.

@NyboeDo you even fight? I feel like you're getting your opinion from others who have actually fought them. And when they explain it to you they over generalize it to make it easier to explain, or they are bitter and pissed off and start saying it's OP because they lost. I don't know, just feels like you're talking out your ass a little.

Yes I do fight. All the opinions I have is what I learned from sparring with other classes.

I am not even sure what you are trying to say in the rest of your post.

He's saying that your assessment of Blademaster runs counter to the
assessments of a lot of folks who have spent time fighting them, as the
number of "disagree" clicks and post rebuttals from reputable fighters implies. I agree that a lot of your statements sound like snap judgments without a lot of research, or information that came second-hand from people that have tried to explain things to you, rather from your first-hand experience and familiarity with Blademaster skills and their uses.

Blademasters I've fought, from the un-artefacted Elowin to the omni-artefacted Anicetus, have used several different setups against me, from broken star, to willpower drain, to flat damage spikes, most of them being very effective if I wasn't very careful and very attentive, and neither of those two ever used the Void-Impale method which I assume you reference with your "99%" remark. (Although that is certainly widely used and abused.) All things considered, Blademaster is one of the strongest classes around right now, having several effective strategies and several abilities or combinations of advantages that make other classes green with envy. Your posts just don't sound like you appreciate that.

-- Grounded in but one perspective, what we perceive is an exaggeration of the truth.

I am not tri trans yet so I haven't gotten to use everything that you mentioned. But 1.5 trans is where I am at right now and I am giving the best assessment I can give of the class as of right now. The thread creator said he will put in 1.5 trans skills to spend. All those other blademaster tactics besides brokenstar you mentioned probably require more then 1.5 trans.

And if you think the class is so great feel free to switch to blademaster. I've seen plenty of people actually switch to blademaster and then a couple weeks later switch out of the class after embracing the class. I never said blademasters was a bad class. I don't think any class is bad. I am just disappointed when the blademaster class lead update came out they didn't add anything at all to the class.

@Eld: Somewhat late, but even burst isn't useless. It's subpar, but it lets you bash with willpower if you've run out of endurance, and you're doing some serious bashing. Also, I think it's completely unaffected by stance, so you could use it to bash in Mir without taking any penalties. Unfortunately, I've never confirmed it (I don't even know how to properly test for denizen damage u_u ), but I think its DPS was still a bit lower than drawslash would be even in Mir (especially if you have a band or something), and it's really slow so it might not be the best option against risky hunting targets.

@Daeir: @Agravain's first post covered the essentials - from there, it's up to you. Shindo utility is pretty awesome and will even help you survive (the worst thing you will ever experience is knowing that Evade is ~1566 lessons in - that being the number of lessons I had at the time when I learned it, so, accurate to about 15 lesson batches), but the elemental fists are pretty cool too (I personally use air/voidfist to force my way past a parry, for instance).

Also, if anyone tells you that a blademaster ability is useless, safely assume that might mean they personally just haven't found a use for it yet. As others have said, blademasters have an unusually low number of actually useless abilities. (I'm still trying to figure out how bounding might be used, though, if anyone happens to know! I admit I haven't researched it very thoroughly, though...)

@Eld: Somewhat late, but even burst isn't useless. It's subpar, but it lets you bash with willpower if you've run out of endurance, and you're doing some serious bashing. Also, I think it's completely unaffected by stance, so you could use it to bash in Mir without taking any penalties. Unfortunately, I've never confirmed it (I don't even know how to properly test for denizen damage u_u ), but I think its DPS was still a bit lower than drawslash would be even in Mir (especially if you have a band or something), and it's really slow so it might not be the best option against risky hunting targets.

I haven't tested burst damage in a long time (my usual way to test damage on denizens is to get a knight to let me hit their falcon a few times, btw), but iirc it was less damage than drawslash and slower even in Mir. It's also int-based instead of strength, and you're likely to have less int than strength as a blademaster. I get the argument about bashing with wp instead of endurance, but I usually run out of willpower (from clotting/focus) well before endurance anyway, so it doesn't occur to me. The one thing that I do tend to forget about it is that (I think, need to double check) it can be used with broken arms, similar to dragon incantation, which could potentially make it handy.

@Eld: ah, that's probably why then. I don't usually clot or focus against denizens (just alleviate to save on curatives, unless they do some pretty severe bleeding, and even then I clot manually), and I actually do happen to have more int than str, so the difference in DPS is probably smaller for me. I thought I confirmed that Burst's attack speed wasn't affected by stance, unless you mean that Mir drawslash is faster than burst.

@Eld: ah, that's probably why then. I don't usually clot or focus against denizens (just alleviate to save on curatives, unless they do some pretty severe bleeding, and even then I clot manually), and I actually do happen to have more int than str, so the difference in DPS is probably smaller for me. I thought I confirmed that Burst's attack speed wasn't affected by stance, unless you mean that Mir drawslash is faster than burst.

Yes, I just meant that I recall burst being slower than the slowest drawslash.

Burst is 4s or something. Tested out a bunch of the Shindo abilities and found the non-utility skills very lacking, bar maybe Annihilation. I was hoping Burst might scale off current Shin, but having maxed Shin in and out of Sanya didn't seem to do anything and barely did 500 damage there. Ah well.